It may be hard for normal people to understand that there are actually candidates to the right of Thom Tillis running for Senate in North Carolina and that he's playing the role of the Establishment (Art Pope) shill. Tillis was first elected to the North Carolina legislature by beating a more mainstream Republican, John Rhodes, in a primary in 2006 and 4 years later was elected by the far right as Speaker. Most people in North Carolina view the General Assembly as far too radical for North Carolina and are horrified at how radical and extreme Tillis' GOP-controled legislature has been. A recent poll showed that a whopping 62% of North Carolina voters disapprove of the legislature and only 15% approve. Asked specifically about Tillis' caucus, 51% of North Carolina voters said they have an unfavorable opinion of the Republicans in the legislature and only 36% had a favorable opinion.
The ad Tillis began running against conservative Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan this morning, typifies his cynical and dishonest approach to politics. He's the first the employ the fully discredited Republican Party Big Lie about the CBO report on Obamacare and employment. Yesterday in the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne was still marveling at the sheer mendacity of Republicans like Tillis, twisting the facts into their own baseless Foxified reality.
By broadening access to health insurance, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ends the tyranny of “job lock,” which is what the much-misrepresented Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study of the law released Tuesday shows. The new law increases both personal autonomy and market rationality by ending the distortions in behavior the old arrangements were creating.The most recent polling in the North Carolina Senate race shows Tillis leading a pack of drooling teabaggers and next and neck in the general with Hagan.
But that’s not how the study has been interpreted, particularly by enemies of the law. Typical was a tweet from the National Republican Congressional Committee, declaring that “#ObamaCare is hurting the economy, will cost 2.5 millions [sic] jobs.”
Glenn Kessler, The Post’s intrepid fact checker, replied firmly: “No, CBO did not say Obamacare will kill 2 million jobs.” What the report said, as the Wall Street Journal accurately summarized it, is that the law “will reduce the total number of hours Americans work by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time jobs.”
Oh my God, say opponents of the ACA, here is the government encouraging sloth! That’s true only if you wish to take away the choices the law gives that 64-year-old or to those parents looking for more time to care for their children. Many on the right love family values until they are taken seriously enough to involve giving parents/workers more control over their lives.
And it’s sometimes an economic benefit when some share of the labor force reduces hours or stops working altogether. At a time of elevated unemployment, others will take their place. The CBO was careful to underscore-- the CBO is always careful-- that “if some people seek to work less, other applicants will be readily available to fill those positions and the overall effect on employment will be muted.”
…The reaction to the CBO study is an example of how willfully stupid-- there’s no other word-- the debate over Obamacare has become. Opponents don’t look to a painstaking analysis for enlightenment. They twist its findings and turn them into dishonest slogans. Too often, the media go along by highlighting the study’s political impact rather than focusing on what it actually says. My bet is that citizens are smarter than this. They will ignore the noise and judge Obamacare by how it works.
Despite Tillis' increased support this primary would still be headed to a runoff if the election was today. If the undecided voters broke proportionately to their current candidate preferences it would only be enough to get Tillis to 34%, well short of the 40% needed in North Carolina to win the primary outright.I wonder if Republicans lying about Obamacare would qualify.
…"The North Carolina Senate race continues to look like a toss up," said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. "It would help Kay Hagan if the electorate shifted its attention to something other than Obamacare."
